


Old friends, old spotters

by loewen_grube



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Will add new characters as it goes, this is a pretty old fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-04-26 16:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14406249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loewen_grube/pseuds/loewen_grube
Summary: After returning to Overwatch, Ana needed to return to her old exercises, and an old friend is more than willing to spot for her.





	1. Chapter 1

Ana’s not new to weight training – in fact, she did it twice a week when she was still in Overwatch in the days that led up to her presumed death.

But lifting the 30-or-so-pound barbell in her hands, she felt like herself when she was still fifteen in the field doing her first exercises in civilian training. Still, she won’t be alive right now if she wasn’t persistent, and she lifts the bar up over her head and rests the weights on her shoulders, taking great care not to force it.

“I haven’t done this for _years_ ,” she says. The sensation was still rather foreign, the texture of the metal and how it rubs against her calloused hands, and she tries to focus as she looks at herself in the mirror and attempts to balance, and she almost fell down to the floor if it wasn’t for him spotting – Reinhardt was behind her almost instantly, catching her before she falls.

“Yes, yes! But routine will get you back in shape, don’t you worry!” Reinhardt sets the barbell back up on her shoulders, rubs her back for motivation, and looks back at the mirror to look at her posture, taking minutes if not seconds on looking at her posture.  

“These are just squats, you do not have to fuss over me.”

“You almost fell seconds ago!” Reinhardt taps on her feet, motioning for Ana to move them a little further apart, and she does so as suggested. “I don’t believe that!”

Ana was about to say how she would have lifted the barbell with ease if _only_ she didn’t sleep at four in the morning due to her fear of embarrassing herself and the thought of people realizing that she’s actually alive and they weren’t dreaming the day before--

“It’s been _years,_ ” was all she was able to say. “Keeping up with _you_ is hard when you’re busy and small.”

“Then you have years to catch up to with keeping up with me, then!” Reinhardt taps her hands. “Okay, okay, enough small talk! First set, my lady! Look at the mirror, keep your posture all right!”

First set of squats were a breeze, ten squats done in a minute or so, but upon stopping and letting her feel the barbell’s weight dig in her shoulders felt like a realization that this isn’t as easy as before. Ana almost dropped the barbell again, but Reinhardt steadies her hands, catches her shoulders before she drops.

“Are you sure you will be okay?” He asks, taking the barbell and gently setting it on the gym floor. “We can pick something lighter.”

“Yes! Yes.” She visibly and audibly catches her breath, making it seem like _no, I am not all right._ “I’ll be fine.”  But she will be. She has to be all right. Ana picks up the barbell he had set down earlier and does a successful attempt on making it look effortless. “Don’t you have your own exercise to do? I can do this, Reinhardt, it’s just squats and a bunch of presses for me today.”

“I don’t know. Will you be all right?”

“Yes! See?” She made a show of lifting the barbell over her head for a few moments before resting it back on her shoulders. “I can do it.”

“Haha!” This show seems to satisfy Reinhardt enough for him to return to wherever he was earlier by the weights rack. “One day, we can lift the same big, heavy things together! Keep at it, I’ll check on you later!” And he proceeds to pull out 25-pound plates, assemble it on a barbell, and began his daily bench presses, and Ana suddenly felt strange with the thirty pounds in her hands.


	2. Chapter 2

She’s assembled a list of exercises to do on a sheet of paper – Zarya was quick to suggest routines the second she knew Ana had returned to the gym – and at a first glance, everything seemed rather… _easy_. Almost every form of exercise _looked_ easy, and Ana knows how easy it is to underestimate her routine, so in a fit of anxiety and fear over her fitness, she dragged Fareeha into the gym with her the day she was given the new routine.

“You do not have to fuss over me a lot, Fareeha,” she says on their way to the weights room, voice almost unlike her proud self, “but I might do something wrong.”

“It’s alright, mum,” Fareeha smiles, patient.

It’s only been weeks since they reunited, and both of them found the opportunity to catch up a welcome change of routine. In the few days ever since she has returned, Ana has noticed that her daughter loved the gym – maybe she has before and she just has not noticed – and this did seem like a good idea the time she asked.

“What were you doing before you returned, anyway?” Fareeha carried some weirdly-labeled bottles of sports drinks and exercise paraphernalia that Ana forgot existed or was just not a thing years ago, and Fareeha hands her one bottle of cloudy ion drink of sorts. “I would have thought you exercised frequently while you were away.”

“I hid, mostly,” Ana answers, opening the bottle and taking a small sip of her drink. It tastes almost like how the label described it. “And there were the occasional contracts in a lot of places, since I needed money and murder seems to be the only thing your mother knows to do. I was in the watchlist a lot of times, and watchlist ladies…… have no time for exercise.”

“Your work _was_ exercise,” Fareeha says, smiling. “Though not as extreme was whatever Zarya is doing.”

Ana laughs, “I’d be surprised if I can even pull a screw off a tank, much more a cannon!”

The laugh that came out of Fareeha was so nostalgic that if she was her prime self around twenty or ten years ago, she’d take out a camera and record it. But memories will have to do for now.

Her laugh was just as ecstatic.

The walk to the gym was quick, and when they got in the gym, Reinhardt was in his corner near the dumbbell racks, and exclaimed his very loud, very enthusiastic “good morning!” before he returns back to… well, whatever he was doing by the mirror with a few dumbbells.

“What were we doing again?”

Ana hands Fareeha the scrap of paper where Zarya has listed the exercises. Fareeha takes it, and musses over it a few seconds before nodding.

“Hm. Seems okay to me.” She takes out a pen and clicks it to write a few notes. “Might just…. tone down some things.”

It felt like dancing, the next few hours or so. Fareeha decided to skip her normal routine altogether so she can go along her mother’s, and as she counts every lift and weight and seconds of break, it was something Ana could get used to. Conversation was silent, and they talked in forms of smiles and looks, and she felt she was a new mother again.

After her last squat with Fareeha, she almost drops along with the barbell, but not before Fareeha gently takes it off her hands and carries it back on the rack.

“I…” she paused, before laughing. “Is that good enough for today?”

“Yes, I think so.” She straightens up, looks at her mother, smiling as best as an exhausted person could. “Same time tomo—“

A ring from Fareeha’s duffle bag interrupts her.

“Oh.” The loud jingle played on for a few seconds before she stepped back to get the call. “Sorry, I’ll get that, mom.”

She runs off and goes out of the gym as soon as she got her hands on her phone.

Fareeha had left due to an emergency meeting with her and other agents for a mission the next week, and because it was so late, it left with just Ana and Reinhardt in the gym, taking a short break by the benches. It still feels odd to her, being with all her old friends after ages. She had been very accustomed to being alone at this time, with whatever tea she’s bought and staring out at a window looking at the view of the sun setting.  Later on, she’d forget to finish half of her tea, and sleep if her thoughts allowed her to.

Her thoughts are cut short by a cold sensation by her arm. She turns to look at it, and it was a bottle of purple Gatorade that felt like it was just taken out of the fridge.

“Calling it a day?” Reinhardt asks.

Ana says a small ‘thank you’ as she takes the bottle and opens it as Reinhardt takes a seat next to her, a huge towel by his arms. He seems occupied wiping off his sweat and cooling down in general, and for a few moments, the two of them are occupied with cooling down and the distant noise of the briefing in the hangar a few doors down.

“Fareeha was here earlier.” He takes out a bottle of pink Gatorade for himself and pauses before he opens it, as if waiting for Ana to say something about it.

Ana just takes a sip of the purple drink. Any day, it would remind her of something else, but not now, with the soft, cold purple drink more refreshing than it looks. “She helped me.”

“It was rather nice seeing you two together.”

She laughs out, almost spitting out her drink. “Really? It’s not a new scene, Reinhardt.”

From where Ana is sitting, Reinhardt looks massive, intimidating in size alone. And so it scared her a little when it took him almost a minute to answer.

“Honestly, I was scared you might not smooth things over when you return.” His voice was uncharacteristically low and silent. He takes another gulp of his drink. “But I’m glad that’s in the past.”

“I was scared things might not be the same for us.” She raises her bottle to drink, ignoring the color altogether.

“ _Us?_ ”

_Shit._ The urge to stand up and avoid the ‘question’ comes, but Ana merely just swallows a huge gulp of purple energy drink before she sets it down. “The team,” she finally blurts out. “You were all my closest friends. I was not sure if you’d accept me back after everything.”

Moments, minutes pass. It felt like hours before he said, “ _Oh_. Yeah, I guess… that would be a concern.”

More silence fills the air. She takes a drink, gulping the energy drink halfway through. The silence feels too awkward, as if goading her to speak. Reinhardt seemed okay with it, however. He stands up, crushing the empty plastic bottle in his hands before chucking it in a nearby wastebin.

“Well, Ana,” he says, silently packing up his things before straightening himself and leaving. “I am still very glad you’re back. I’m here if you need help.” With that, he leaves, silently and carefully closing the glass doors of the weights room behind him.

The energy drink had gone warm in her hands, and taking a sip, it tasted way worse than it did earlier. Maybe more should have been said, she thinks, as she finishes the bottle and chucks it in the wastebin. But it’s too late. And besides, she will see him tomorrow. Maybe there would still be an opportunity to say it if she can keep up with him and somehow catch up on his training…


End file.
